Systems that provide digital content in a wireless environment are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,653,574 to Harper et al. describes a method for in store purchase of digital content in which a number of kiosks (“LVS”) are set up around the store. The customer logs onto a kiosk and browses digital content. The customer can then purchase the digital content and download it to a mobile device or burn it to a CD.
U.S. Published Pat. Application No. 2008/0062940 discloses a method of pushing content to a mobile device when it is detected that the mobile device is within a proximity of a location covered by a wireless local area network (WLAN).
U.S. Published Pat. Application No. 2009/0055408 generally describes a method for sharing digital content from a localized server. The content is shared between a wireless storage device and a sharing device, over a wireless interface.
While these systems describe various methods of sharing digital content over a network, they do not provide a method for limiting the amount of free digital content that can be downloaded or streamed to a customer's portable device at a retail store or other location, so as to limit delivery of the content to the portable device to the case when the device is in the immediate vicinity of the retail store or other location, and in accordance with the amount and time duration of the customer's accessing of the digital content.